A good discussion about the economy, free markets, bi-partisan politics, government regulation, accountability, national security, and the war in Afghanistan, etc. from an interview in Sarasota, FL today.

On the other hand…there’s this:

“There have been many underestimated persons who’ve been elected to office and have really been then provided the opportunity to prove the pundints wrong.”

RC — I double/triple checked that on the video to make sure I wasn’t just mishearing it. And then I verified it via Google… Sure enough, she’s on record as having used this term in the past. Why no one bothers to correct her is a bit odd. Maybe it’s an Alaska thing.

Robert — Yeah, well “family values” is pretty much a load of bollocks in any case. As Bryan Ferry said many years ago, “in every dreamhome a heartbreak”… I could go on, but I’m perhaps rather biased on the matter, especially at the moment.

It’s not hard to understand the pitch to the “middle class” that invokes the home-spun corniness of “family values”… it’s all part of the collective hypocrisy and delusional mainstream fairy tale that we’re actively and quite relentlessly encouraged to subscribe to even if it’s not applicable to our particular situation.

I think that’s part of what I found so irksome about McVety’s little rant that was referenced on a previous thread. “Normative”… that was the word he used repeatedly. It begs many questions as to what is “normal” or “average”… or for that matter “ordinary”… We hear these terms bandied around all the time, but they are rather curious, no?

Maybe they’re meant to be attractive — appealing to the lowest common denominator and all that, but by the same token they’re also very exclusive to many people.

Totally O/T, but Bill Kristol was just interviewed on TDS. Jon Stewart has a lot of patience for this clown. Although he was moderately less annoying than usual, he was still sporting that same smarmy shit-eating grin that drives me up the wall. He did, however, express hope that McCain would win – which bodes well for Obama’s chances.

Bill is usually quite hilarious on TDS. I can’t stand his insufferable smugness and shit-eating grin either, but he always seems to be a lot more candid and just plain funny in that forum. And yes, given that he’s reliably wrong about everything, predictions of a McCain victory bode well for the forces of Reason.